Tide

by Lacy Sheridan

  And because I knew she’d understand the order, I took a step from her and watched her hesitate before vanishing into the trees. I sent a mental prayer up to the old gods that she’d return home safe and then turned away.

  I stepped to Aven and studied the glow in the water. “We’re going to have to swim down to it, aren’t we?” He nodded. Floating along the surface was one thing. I’d gotten used to it. But diving down below—deep, deep below, maybe—was another.

  And in the dark, with only that cyan light to guide me…

  Aven looked to me and held out one hand. Not a request, not a challenge, but a wordless offer. I took it.

  His fingers tightened on mine the slightest bit as we stepped into the water. I knew he could have dived to the passing in seconds, but he didn’t. He kept pace with me instead, let me decide each step. I didn’t let myself think of what might be down there or what might be waiting for us on the other side. I thought of every careful step, every slow, steady breath. Of the warm, sure hold Aven kept on my hand.

  My chest tightened as we paused, the water lapping around my shoulders and chilling me to the bone. I struggled to keep my breathing even as it pushed itself to speed into gasps. The current tugged at my pack and I clung to its strap, heart racing. It won’t float away, it won’t float away.

  The light didn’t look so far away. Down, yes, and among the shaking darkness I couldn’t tell how far, but not far from where we stood now.

  Aven’s eyes were trained on the passing, and I could see the glow of it reflected in them, flickering among the shades of blue. His voice was as stiff as the set of his shoulders. “Keep swimming. It shouldn’t be too far, just keep swimming toward it. Even if it gets too bright, even if it gets too cold, keep swimming. You’ll feel this world try to tug you back. Don’t let it. And when you reach the passing there’ll be a—like a crack in you. And it will hurt, I won’t lie, but you won’t be harmed. Once you feel that you’ll know you’re through.”

  I nodded and echoed, “Whatever happens, keep swimming.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Aven.” I didn’t mean to lower my voice but fear forced it. He waited. “Don’t let go.”

  He could swim much faster and easier than I could. If he wanted to, he could drop my hand as soon as we were under, and I might never find my way to the passing. The light might blind me, the darkness might swallow me.

  He nodded once. “I won’t.”

  I sucked in a long breath of night air and pushed off the rocky seabed. It was like diving straight into black ice: it sliced through me, freezing my entire body in the first second. A tug from Aven brought me to attention.

  It was dark. So much darker than above the surface, like the light had been cut out of the world. I couldn’t even find the light of the passing, and I found myself spinning in search of it, panic rising in my chest.

  If I couldn’t see the light underwater, how could I keep swimming for it?

  Aven tugged my hand again, stopping me, and I blinked against the burning saltwater again and again until I could see the faint shadow of him beside me.

  There, in the direction he pulled me, a tiny wisp of blue against the endless black. So far away.

  But I blinked again and it wasn’t. The light was shifting in the dark—midnight blue and inky indigo shades drowning out the cyan. And even as I floated, shivering, it kept changing: blue turned to white and silver and stormy gray, then the pink of sunrise, and, burning at the heart of it, a jewel green that glimmered and shifted as if the tide itself pushed and pulled at its magic.

  The ache beginning in my chest reminded me of where we were, and I kicked toward the rainbow of light. Aven hung close to me. My focus narrowed to the sliver of warmth that was his hand and to the dazzling light at the heart of the passing, what I knew had to be the opening in the barrier.

  Down deeper. I fought against every instinct screaming to push myself to the surface, away from the freezing, breathtaking beauty of that break in the ancient magic. My throat burned. My eyes stung.

  Closer.

  The light was all around us, searing through me more than the water had. I tried to shut my eyes against it, but it shone through my eyelids in an indistinct, muddled brightness, and I feared I’d miss the opening.

  When it surrounded us, cutting off all traces of the dark water beyond, I saw the passing clearly.

  And it was the most stunning thing I’d ever seen. None of Aven’s words could compare. None of the paintings in my village or the old stories. It was something all its own, beyond what could be simply said.

  It truly was a crack between worlds. As if the entire ocean had been broken apart to allow for an empty space. Whispers danced around us, seeping from it and through the water. I couldn’t understand the words, but the voices were like music, like the sky and the rain and the waves. The passing appeared to have no end and no beginning, only that drifting, swirling, blazing light, and the water sparkled and sang with something I knew didn’t exist in my world. What I knew must be magic, a feeling that resonated in my bones and blood, a feeling of loss and hope and such power and life I could only float and drink it in.

  Aven’s hand tightened on mine, pulled, and I tore my gaze from the passing to him. The light flashed off him, turning human and sealskin a thousand shades, and I knew what he meant. We didn’t have time to stare; the burn in my throat spread to my lungs, the ache and cold in my muscles deepened. I forced my free arm to move, then my legs.

  Toward the end of the passing. Closer.

  Closer.

  It was so bright Aven disappeared. I was blinded, and a phantom hand clawed at my throat.

  I clamped my jaws shut, shoving the nightmare out of my mind. I wouldn’t open them, I wouldn’t suck in that breath and let my lungs fill with water.

  Phantom claws pulled at me. My legs wouldn’t work.

  Aven’s hand disappeared.

  I choked on a scream. Salt burned my tongue.

  I thrashed through the water, snatching at the emptiness as if I could find Aven that way, or break the surface, or anything—

  The light was everywhere, too much.

  You’ll feel this world try to tug you back, Aven had said. Was that all this was? Both worlds realizing I had no right to this magic?

  Don’t let it.

  I pushed myself in the direction I was sure we’d been going, the way the passing had to be. Where was Aven? Why wasn’t he helping me?

  I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe, and I felt the water coursing through me, strangling me. My legs wouldn’t push me any further.

  Something slid across my skin, smooth and silky and cool.

  The fangs of the sellye flitted across my mind’s eye. I kicked out at it, but my feet met empty, swirling water.

  Up. Up, I needed to go up.

  That flash of something beside me again, something living. I yanked away. My head spun. I needed air now.

  I was too numb to feel what clamped onto my arm and pulled. Teeth? I slapped at it, clawed, scratched, but there was nothing I could do. If a sellye, or one of the tidespeople who had attacked had come for me there was nothing I could do. Or even something from my world, some shark or hunting fish. I could give into the unconsciousness tugging at my mind and drift into nothing. At least I wouldn’t feel it eat me.

  And what would happen to Tobin then?

  What would Aven think of how easily I’d given up?

  I dug my fingernails into whatever held onto me, feeling nothing but ice all around.

  And then a sliver of something in the blinding light. Something solid.

  Fire ripped through me from head to toe, and every muscle felt torn apart, every bone shattered. The light vanished all at once, and something split. Something deep inside, like that ever-fading tie to my home had given out.

  And then it was gone and I was numb again—grateful for it this time, to escape that pain—and white noise rushed around me.

  And air—there was air.

>   I gasped, water rising in my throat and choking me all over again. I hauled myself up on trembling arms and gagged and coughed. My insides burned as if they’d been scrubbed raw. My eyes watered, and when I blinked the tears away the scene before me tilted and spun, prompting a fresh wave of nausea.

  When it righted I saw the grass I was lying in, the clear sky above. The deep blue of the space between night and dawn, a few streaks of pink and orange reaching from the horizon.

  Something lay beside me, and it took me a long while to figure out the looming dark shape. A seal. Sleek, its pelt a familiar mottled black, its sides heaving.

  Aven.

  I opened my mouth to call his name but no sound came out, my throat too raw. Before I could try again, the dark coloring rippled with a paler shade and gave way to a smaller, leaner build, and in seconds it was Aven—the Aven I knew, human on the surface—on his back. He was gasping for breath as much as I was and raised one hand to push through his hair, staring upwards.

  “Never do that again,” he growled.

  “What?” I croaked and winced at the sound of my voice.

  He let his head fall to the side to face me. Exhaustion, anger, and a startling kind of terror fought in his eyes. “I said you’d have to fight it. You could have gotten both of us killed, flailing around in the water like that. If I was smarter I’d have left you to drown.”

  I managed a weak laugh, but not because it was funny. “But you didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he grumbled as he sat up. He rubbed at the side of his neck, where several thin red lines cut toward his shoulder. Scratches, far smaller than the sellye’s, but a few welling with blood in scattered spots. Fingernails. I winced again. “You could have at least not tried to claw my eyes out.”

  “I’m sorry.” I pushed myself up again, my arms trembling with the effort. I was shaking head to toe from the cold that seeped through me. My hair and dress dripped seawater, my pack as heavy as if it was made of lead. I pushed it off my shoulders to get rid of the weight and wrapped my arms around myself. It didn’t help.

  Aven gave me a long, steady look and murmured, “Are you alright?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.” Not in the most traditional sense, but I was alive. “Are you?”

  He didn’t answer, his gaze sliding past me to what lay beyond. The look on his face pushed what had happened into my mind.

  We’d made it through the passing.

  Which meant we were no longer in my world.

  I blinked, daring a glance around me, but Aven cut me off with a swift, smooth movement that left him standing beside me, one hand held out to me. “I’m better,” he said, taking in where we were.

  I took his hand and climbed to my feet as well. My balance was shaky, and I leaned into him until it steadied. “We made it,” I breathed.

  A relieved smile crossed his face. “Welcome to the Realm of Tides.”

  Our stories didn’t tell what the Realm of Tides looked like. Before the war we may have known, but nobody living did. Nobody had passed it down in words, or if they had, the words had died away. Nobody had painted it in the village. Those few who ventured through the barrier never returned. So I didn’t know what to expect across the passing, and my senses were too shocked and dizzy to care. But the longer I stood there, Aven’s hand lingering in mine, the more they cleared, and I saw how true the tales of the barrier had been. That our worlds flowed into one another seamlessly.

  In the first moment, I wondered if we’d crossed the barrier or had been thrown back into my world; there was an empty field beneath a lightening sky, the dark shapes of trees in the distance to one side and an endless expanse of grass to the other. The air smelled faintly of sea salt and growing things, soft and warm with the slightest breeze.

  And then the differences settled into my mind.

  The dusky purple hue to the grass wasn’t shadow cast by dawn, it didn’t lighten to green with the rising sun but to a paler gray-violet. The shifting colors hanging in the air weren’t fading away to solid blue. Like the way the passing had glowed and swirled, the sky shone with endless color: pinks and blues and oranges, all pale and giving way to one another. I stared, waiting for the sunlight to push them away, but it never did.

  The sound around us—it was the tide itself, a soft, whispering white noise never ceasing, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  It was like standing in a dream: strange, exotic, impossible, but somehow right. I stared, trying to take in every inch of it and convince myself it was real. We’d made it. We’d really made it through. Inch by inch, relief crept through my veins and loosened my tense muscles. We’d made it. We’d really made it. Laughter bubbled up my throat, but I swallowed it.

  I looked to Aven and found him with his eyes closed, face turned up to the painted sky. He glowed in the rising sun. If before he had looked like a piece out of one of those mystic murals, now it looked like that piece had stepped into place. Like everything around him was fitted to be there, to make the otherworldliness of him known. One look told me this was where he belonged. Not my world, not in that terrible, cold village or the quiet forest. Not even on the rocky beach. Here.

  He was home, and I saw a kind of peace I’d never seen before settle on his face. I tore my gaze away when he opened his eyes, and though I didn’t think I’d been caught, I fought off the heat rising in my face. When would I stop blushing at the thought of him catching me? He’d already said all humans stared.

  “Do you know where we are?” I asked, looking around again. I focused on the grass swaying in the breeze, the brush of the cool air across me, chilling my skin through the wet fabric of my dress. The unending dance of the colors in the sky. In the distance a handful of tiny figures soared through the air, maybe birds or maybe something else. Down they dove toward the trees, and I watched as they disappeared. The way they flew was strange, smoother than anything I’d seen before.

  Aven was looking around as well, every movement careful. He stepped forward one step, then another, as if he needed to adjust to being back in his world. “I’m not sure. The passings aren’t very accurate, they toss you out wherever they like.”

  “So what next?” We could figure out where we were—there had to be some sort of village nearby—but beyond that, what? I had no idea where Tobin might be. I had no idea where Aven wanted to go, where his home was. His family.

  Did he have a family? He’d never mentioned one beyond his parents. Surely he did. Family, friends, a home he’d been missing for decades.

  He started toward the vague shape of trees on the horizon, and I hurried to follow. “Next, we figure out where we’ve ended up,” he said. “And then where we go from here.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “With any luck I’ll recognize something, a landmark of some sort. Or, better yet, we’re close to a town and can find out what Court we’ve landed in.”

  My stomach twisted. “Court?”

  “Our lands. Factions. They command territories, their leaders negotiate trade and borders and travel. When wars begin they’re between Courts. It’s nothing exciting, really, but depending on which one we’re in, it could make things a lot easier.”

  A Court. Civilization.

  It had been a handful of days since I’d left my village, but already I could close my eyes and dream of their voices, their faces. Of fresh baked bread and clean clothes. If we were in a Court chances were there was some kind of settlement nearby. A place we could gather fresh supplies and have a comfortable meal. My mouth watered at the thought.

  I tried not to think about the fact that I’d barely slept as I followed Aven, pushing for every step. I tried not to think about the fact that every inch of my body was weighed down with water and cold, drained of all energy by the passing. We’d gotten through, we were alive, and I was that much closer to Tobin. It was a victory, and I intended to hold onto it for as long as possible.

  I stopped again when the trees came into view more clearly,
staring. I blinked once, twice, to make myself believe what I was seeing was real and not a trick of my exhaustion or the strange light, but no, these were real, and the trees were scarcely trees at all. They were tall and thin and hung with arms twisting this way and that. Instead of cracked brown bark, they were covered in what looked like rough stone. It was uneven, round with lumps and bubbles in some places and jagged spikes and crevices in others. Where leaves should have been there were long, feathery growths swaying from the branches, catching in the wind. And they were colorful, far more colorful than any tree had any right to be, some vibrant pink or purple, some rich red, some as blue as Aven’s eyes. Like they weren’t trees at all, but strange pieces of art.

  Aven didn’t bat an eye at them, just trailed one hand along the trunk of one as he passed. As if he’d missed this sight when he’d been gone. I swallowed my questions and touched my fingertips to the nearest tree, tracing the fine bumps in its sea-green surface. It had none of the tough softness of tree bark; it was cold and stone-hard.

  The strange forest was looser than the one at home, lighter. The feathery leaves cast soft, pale shadows across the ground, different than the dappled ones I was used to, and a few low-hanging ones brushed my bare arms as I passed. I yanked away, startled by the touch, but they seemed harmless, and I forced myself to relax. Scattered among the trees were other tall plants I couldn’t hope to identify, most as bright as everything else. Plants like tendrils of seaweed that grew up to my waist and then draped down across the ground. Flowers in all shapes, some as large as my head. I paused to watch a violet creature no bigger than the palm of my hand flit to a flower on membranous wings and nip at the petals. Another like it drifted toward us and Aven shooed it away. From somewhere came what may have been a birdcall.

  “This is beautiful,” I breathed, twisting to see everything at once. It was like walking through a dream.

  Aven glanced to me, a smile playing on his lips. “Certainly different from your world.”